


Hide and Seek and Seek and Seek

by Control_Room



Series: 3-D [2]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Picnics, because im like that, cuddle piles, death mention, gingie and linda are pipesflowforeverandevers, hyde centric again whoops, ivy mj charlotte and hyde are stars/ballofyarns, joy and snowy are aceofintuitions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 20:19:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18557104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room
Summary: Joey decides to have a picnic with his family.





	Hide and Seek and Seek and Seek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BallofYarn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BallofYarn/gifts), [PipesFlowForeverandEver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipesFlowForeverandEver/gifts), [AceofIntuition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofIntuition/gifts).



Joey sighed contentedly as he stirred his coffee. Smiling, he thought of his plans for the day - a nice sunday off, he would take his darling girls off to the park, his lovely Charlotte and dear Mary Jane. A picnic, maybe, yes, that would suit them just fine. When was the last time the three of them did something small and simple like that?

 

Charlotte came over, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

 

“Someone’s thinking hard,” she teased as he jolted out from his small stupor of plotting the day out. He rolled his eyes, turning to kiss her, yet her footsteps had already slipped away. “What’re you thinking about, Joey?”

 

“About how much I love you,” he replied with a twinkle in his voice, that he knew she heard. She looked back at him, a hand over her lips, failing to conceal a smile. With a cheeky grin, he smiled back at her, and returned to his coffee.

 

“What do you think of a picnic?” he offered. She paused. “Just you, me, and Mary Jane. Out to the old park. It’s been a while since we’ve had one, and the weather has been rather nice lately, don’t you think?”

 

“Hm…” she looked up to the ceiling, tapping her fingers on her chin. “Maybe….”

 

“Yeah…?” he prompted, striding over to her to give her a hug, but she wriggled swiftly from his grasp. “It’ll be nice!”

 

“Alright,” she conceded, heading into the kitchen. “I’ll go make some sandwiches or something for us. Any special requests?”

 

“A canister of coffee, if you will, sweetheart,” he hummed happily. “I’ll go and find where Mary Jane has squirreled herself off to.”

 

She had been in her room, playing with a stuffed lamb he did not quite remember getting for her. It had a big tri colored bow, six legs, and a soft goofy grin. It felt oddly familiar, though he felt he had never seen it before.

 

“Ready to go?” Charlotte asked with a smile, the sun outlining her form in the kitchen’s window, and her felt love surge in him once more. She turned to look at his dopey grin, holding their daughter in his arms, and with a grin, she sauntered over to him, passing him the basket she prepared for them. “I’ll take that smile of yours as a yes. What do you think, Mary Jane?”

 

She giggled in reply, and the three of them escaped the confines of their home for the greener grasses of the park.

 

Blanket spread over the ground, munching on sandwiches, light chatter, the strange feeling he got whenever he looked at Mary Jane’s lamb, it was all so very natural and warm. Another girl, dark hair, darker skinned, waved Mary Jane over with a laugh. She looked to her father for his ascent, and after he gave a light nod, she ran off to her. Two others watched the girls play, one in peach, the other in blue. They were strangely familiar, though in a strange, jamais vu fashion.

 

Hands passed over his eyes.

 

“Guess who?” her voice, light and joking, played like swan songs to his ears.

 

“Is it, by chance, the love of my life, my darling, beautiful, Charlotte?” 

 

She laughed softly, and Joey felt like he was soaring, beaming that he caused such a lovely sound from her sweet lips. He grinned, sighing happily. This truly was domestic bliss, and nothing could ever compare to it.

 

“May I have a kiss, dear?”

 

“Maybe,” she hummed over his shoulder, and then disappeared behind him. “If you can catch me!”

 

He leapt up, catching the sight of the tail of her skirt as she vanished into the trees. With a grin, he briskly took off after her.

 

“Over here!” her voice beckoned him. He rounded a corner sharply, feeling her step on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek before slipping from his hands again. “Here, Joey!”

 

“Come now, Charlotte, have some pity on this old man,” he laughed, spinning round and spying her hair behind another tree. He crept to her, only for her to dart under his arms. With a laughing groan, he tilted his head back. “Is this the price for a kiss?”

 

He turned around at the sound of her calling him again, and was startled to see her right before him, holding herself to a tree by her knees, pressing an upside down kiss to his nose, using his stunned reaction as fair time to elude him once more. He huffed another incredulous laugh, and followed her out of the wood. It was still dark when he emerged, and walking backwards from the small forest, he saw dark rain clouds above.

 

They should return home soon.

 

Mary Jane was watching him with dark eyes. She stood beside the darker haired girl. Behind them were the two familiar yet not at all men, looking to him with the same thoughtful expression. He walked over to them cautiously, and found himself unable to reach them, as though a glass had been slid over the space between them. Mary Jane’s eyes cleared, and she waved a hand for him to lower himself to her height. Breathing on the empty air, she wrote in the fog of her breath ‘soon’ with a smile, holding her four legged ram tightly.

 

He smiled, that was fine, she would be back home before dinner. 

 

He heard Charlotte call him again, and he turned to her voice, looking up at the picnic they had set up on the hill beside the tree, and he made his way up it, humming to himself happily. The tree never seemed any nearer the more he walked, but he knew that all he had to do was to keep going. Silence enveloped him, not wind nor birds accompanying him. There she was, he told himself.

 

His heart stopped.

 

His feet did not, dragging him against his will to the slab.

 

No.

 

No no no.

 

This could not be true, he numbly thought, dumbly hoped, falling to his knees and running a hand over the tombstone. And yet, there was a part of him smiling in cruel victory, the victory of an ‘I told you so’, and the other part of him was released in a scream that echoed over the empty expanse, over and over and over, ringing on and on.

 

He backed away as soon as he could scramble to his feet, tripping over himself as he stumbled away as fast as he could.

 

She could not be dead, he refused to accept it.

 

His back hit that odd, awful, slippery divide, but it morphed under his touch, marble encroaching his fingers, making him jolt around, terrified.

 

Six slabs rose before him.

 

The names screamed at him, and as many times as he read them over, they could not stick, he could not recall them, yet in agony he read them over and over, red snow drifting on the tallest, an ink stained top hat precariously balanced on the next, ivy and thorns dancing up the third, fourth dripping sickly with the tar like ink, the next swarming with webs and cracked, the last translucent and pale, too pale, gone, stolen away, where was his family, where was his family!?

 

Hands came to his shoulders, pulling him back, and he screamed, every nerve alight, tears sparking in his eyes, darkness over taking him, but the hands on his shoulders stuck, holding tight.

 

A finger on his lips, accompanied with urgent hushing, greeted him.

 

He blinked in the darkness, honey gold eyes searching his face with worry.

 

He deflated in relief.

 

“There we are, dearest Hyde,” Gingie softly said in a manner that made it seem as though he had been attempting to rouse him for some time. His finger left his lips, and went to trace under his eye. “Are you alright? It seemed like quite the nightmare you were having.”

 

Hyde, unable to speak, shook his head, shaking as though the devil were at his heels. 

 

“There, there,” Gingie murmurs, pulling the taller to his chest in an attempt to calm him down. Hyde’s shaking reduced to trembling. “It is alright. It’s alright, yes? Would you like to go check on Mary Jane?”

 

Hyde nodded, still shivering, and Gingie helped him out of the bed, leading the way to the girls’ room. Linda was in her crib, Joy soundly on her bed, Ivy and Mary Jane dozing away on their bunkbed. Hyde smiled and nearly collapsed in the doorway, twisting his ring and feeling relief soak into him. Gingie looked over him, and mutely convinced him back to bed, and in sending him off, knocked quietly on another door. Snowy soundlessly opened it, and Gingie quietly explained the situation.

 

The two of them stole back into Gingie and Hyde’s shared room, each carrying two girls, and they settled around the man who was already drifting off fitfully. Gingie reached over to his best friend to take his hand as they snuggled around Hyde with their kids, smiling in the dark even as the other attempted to hide his grin.

 

Looking on one side, and seeing Gingie, Joy and Linda, a profound sense of happiness slowly dripped into his being, and looking on the other to see Ivy, Mary Jane, and Snowy, a incredulous factor was added, that this was real, and this was his family….

 

For once, in what felt like at least a good few decades, Hyde managed to sleep without a single nightmare, and they plagued him less and less as his family grew tighter.

 

Ana, Marvin, and Henry made sure to take a lot of pictures of that night.

 

It was quite fun to hold over Snowy’s head, even Gingie had to admit that.


End file.
